Haven’t uploaded in a while so here’s a random wip of a drawing I’m working on :) anyone excited for the new series of unfortunate events on netflix???….. i know I am XD
Initial sketches of this very bright young lady! As I was designing some different patterns for her dress, I decided to hide some V.F.D symbols on the fabric. Can you find all eight of them? I’ll give you a clue: they’re all on the first pic! Hahah now it’s too easy :)
violet invented a built-in typewriter for taxi where instead of typing on the keys you rotate the wheel to different positions and back to type out a letter. it’s a birthday gift to lemony.
If writers drove as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf.
So I’ve always had this theory that after the Baudelaire parents killed Count Olaf’s parents they stole his fortune (why else would a count be so poor?) and that’s why he’s so obsessed with stealing the Baudelaire fortune, because he thinks it’s rightfully his and they took it from him. I’ve heard of several other people who have essentially this same theory and a lot of those people believe it’s the point that Count Olaf turned bad. If you include the Netflix series as canon (which I do), then you know that Count Olaf wasn’t always bad and once was “noble”. The question then becomes, when did he turn bad?
But ultimately I don’t think Count Olaf did turn bad. I don’t think he turned bad for the simple reason that I don’t think Daniel Handler (or me for that matter) believes that people can “turn bad”. People just do bad things and all that makes up who we are is our actions in this world. Olaf used his grief and anger as an excuse for vile behavior in the name of revenge and used his tragic past as justification to act cruel to people who hadn’t actually harmed him. The Baudelaire orphans weren’t responsible for their parents’ misdoings - they were just there and Olaf took his revenge out on him.
That’s why I love Olaf’s “redemption arc” so much - because it doesn’t actually redeem him. There’s a lot of debate and internal conflict in The Penultimate Peril and The End about whether the Baudelaire orphans and Count Olaf are the same and whether the orphans are just as bad as him. But ultimately, what distinguishes Olaf from the Baudelaire orphans in the end is that the Baudelaires were “noble enough” and understood that bad situations don’t excuse bad behavior. They did bad things, but they regretted it and they only did it if it was absolutely necessary. Olaf had an incredibly tragic story - probably one of the most tragic of any children’s villain in American canon - and it’s okay to feel sad for him when you read it, but he ruined all chance at redemption when he used his tragic story as an excuse to continue perpetuating the cycle of abuse.
So much of ASOUE is a metaphor about child abuse and abusers (Handler was a survivor of CSA) and Olaf represents an abusive person who also suffered abuse. His decision to be cruel to others after experiencing intense cruelty himself is what the cycle of abuse is at its very core. It’s very sad, and it makes you look at the whole situation differently, but in the end he chose to do what he did even though he had first hand experience with how much it ruins people and that is what makes him the villain and the Baudelaires the heroes despite any tragic backstory Snicket can give
“It’s now been many years, months, and sleepless nights since I began to investigate the Baudelaire orphans, but despite all my research, I have been unable to determine their whereabouts. I cannot find them. I cannot help them. I can only hope that they’re alive and safe… wherever they are now.”
